BY FESTUS OKOROMADU
The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission has revealed that the Federal Government subsidized electricity consumption in the country with about N35.02 billion in the second quarter of 2022.
NERC further disclosed that it was also gathered that only 4,898,721 or 38.74 percent of electricity consumers in the country are metered even as the number of estimated registered energy customers as at June 2022 stood at 12,643,630.
The commission stated that a total of 167,956 meters were installed in the second quarter of 2022 as against 85,510 meters installed in the first quarter of 2022.
NERC, in its quarterly report for Q2, 2022 obtained from its website on Friday, attributed the subsidy payment to poor remittance from the Distribution Companies and non-cost reflective tariffs.
Reviewing the commercial performance of the industry during the period, NERC said, DisCos were only able to achieve about 71 percent revenue collection rate in the review period, as only N188.29 billion out of a total bill of N265.68 billion issued to customers was collected. The figure was put at N188.29 billion, representing 70.87 percent collection efficiency.
The figure, however, represents a 1.53 basis points increase quarter on quarter, compared to the performance in Q1, 2022, when average collection efficiency stood at 69.34 percent.
In monetary terms, both billings and collections reduced at almost the same rate when compared with the figures in the previous quarter as billing reduced by N30.02 billion, representing a (-10.15%) drop while collections reduced by N21.88 billion (-10.41%).
In terms of remittance to Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Plc, NERC disclosed: “In Q2/2022, out of the total invoice of N184.91 billion issued to NBET by Generation Companies, NBET was only able to invoice N149.89 billion to DisCos because of the MRO adjustments made owing to the allowed end user tariffs.
“However, NBET only received N102.35 billion during the quarter which represents an overall DisCo remittance performance of 68.28 percent. This was 1.58 basis points higher than the 66.70 percent (N109.96 billion remitted against an MRT adjusted invoice of N164.86 billion) in Q1, 2022.
“It is worthy to note that the government is responsible for providing NBET with the N35.02 billion it could not invoice to the DisCos because of non-cost reflective tariffs across all DisCos in the form of energy subsidies,” NERC disclosed.
The report also noted that the Ajaokuta Steel Company, a Federal Government owned company, did not pay for electricity consumed.
“During the same period, Ajaokuta Steel Company was invoiced N264.76 million and N66.71 million by NBET and Market Operators (MO) respectively, however it made no remittance.”
On metering, NERC hinted that meter installations increased marginally from 37.79 percent in March 2022 to 38.74 percent in June 2022, despite the winding down of the National Mass Metering Programme phase 02 as a result of the uptake of the MAP metering scheme by most DisCos.
The Commission, however, assured that it will continue to engage relevant stakeholders to ensure month-on-month increments in metering rate while instituting safeguards against overbilling of unmetered customers (by setting maximum limits to the amount of energy that may be billed to an unmetered customer every month).
